Welcome to the Perl 6 Workspace

Please feel free to add or modify pages — even this one — as you see fit. That's the idea of a Workspace. So please contribute links and information!

What is Perl 6?

What is Perl 6? Perl 6 is an extensively refactored, super-modernized, and ultra-supercharged derivative of Perl 5. Simple things will still be simple to do, but you'll have enormously more "programming leverage" available for tackling challenging tasks. Chromatic has written a good introductory article on why Perl 6 is needed, and what it is. Also see Juerd's Refuting Perl6 Myths. (A slight correction to Juerd's slides: it is Perl 5.10 that will have many Perl 6 features you can start using. These will be in feature.pm which is currently part of the Perl 5.9 developer branch.)

Larry Wall (2006): Perhaps the Perl 6 slogan should be "All Your Paradigms Are Belong To Us". We'll get to that.

Damian Conway (2003): The Perl 6 design process is about keeping what works in Perl 5, fixing what doesn't, and adding what's missing. That means there will be a few fundamental changes to the language, a large number of extensions to existing features, and a handful of completely new ideas. These modifications, enhancements, and innovations will work together to make the future Perl even more insanely great -- without, we hope, making it even more greatly insane.

Perl 6 is still under construction. So don't make critical plans that depend on it just yet. However, please see other sections below about intermediate Perl 6-related solutions you can use now (or soon, as in Perl 5.10, which will feature several Perl 6 features).

Crazy (in a good way)

Perl 5 : Swiss Army Chain Saw == Perl 6 : Swiss Army T-X Terminator (on the side of humans in this case)

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What are people doing with Perl 6?

Darren Duncan's work on a Perl 6 Relation type (as in relational algebra and data structures).

this

that

the other

General Perl 6 News

Planet Perl 6 blog aggregrator (The best general news source for Perl 6. It would be very helpful if others selectively copied the most useful information from this great resource into appropriate sections of this wiki.)

Perl 6 Synopses (This is the official Perl 6 specification, which supersedes the apocalypses and exegeses, and which is bundled with Perl 6 builds. The rapidly growing Perl 6 test base is another {very important, complementary, and emerging} part of the Perl 6 specification as well.)